I started working weekends in March (I still work weekdays) and the weekend nursing supervisor has been extremely flirtatious towards me. He makes sexually suggestive comments towards me, holds my hand, brushes up against me, rubs my arm, draws smiley faces on my paperwork that I leave at my computer when I am in a patient's room, he has given me his cell phone number and has asked repeatedly why I don't text or call him.
For example I am working on the computer and have my hand on the mouse, he comes up behind me and puts his hand over mine and will then pick up my hand and holds it. He said, "your hands are cold, I can warm you up. Would you like it if I warmed you up?"
One day I offered to help a NA roll a patient in the bed so he could get cleaned up. The supervisor said to me, "you can help me in bed." I said, "I doubt you need help." He said, "you never know, why don't you offer to help me out?"
I was about to use a bladder scanner on a patient and the supervisor took the lubricant, squirted it onto his hand, then rubbed it onto my arm. I was shocked. He said, "I have wanted to put some lubricant on you for a long time." I walked off to get paper towels to clean it up, and he came after me and took the towels and wiped it off my arm.
I was standing at the ER doorway waiting for the ambulance to bring in a patient and he stood beside me and started to tap and rub his foot on my shoe. I said, "Your shoes have sparkles on them. I didn't know you liked sparkles." (I honestly thought he would get offended and stop.) He said, "there's a lot of things you don't know about me. All you have to do is ask. I'd like you to get to know me better."
There are a lot of incidents like this. My coworkers know what's going on and some have said "you just have to know how to take him when he makes comments and he is like that to some nurses." Some have said he has been fired from several jobs because of sexual harassment. Even patients have seen some of this behavior and have said that they think it is wrong (he will come into a patient's room with me to see what I am doing or if I need anything or to just check on me).
I don't want to be rude and I do want it to stop, but I definitely don't want to lose my job. I am seriously afraid to say anything. This is the nursing supervisor, so this is my boss's boss. Part of me thinks I might be overly sensitive and overreacting. I've just never had anyone be like this around me. I have not seen him do this to other nurses. I did hear that he was like this to an ICU nurse years ago, but she no longer works here.
So what do you think? Am I overreacting? Is there anything that I can do? Part of me thinks I just need to deal with it and eventually he will stop.
If your story is true, then no - you are not overreacting.
Seek a lawyer's advice. Sexual harassment is fiendishly hard to prove. It's also a huge liability issue for business organizations and they all have mechanisms to address it. They have a vested interest in suppressing and discouraging complaints, though, so you need someone on your side that they can't control.
The first priority is your safety. Has he threatened you or your job? If so, get out!
Is it possible to transfer out from under his direct supervision?
Have you told him to stop? That needs to be your first move. You need to say it directly and preferably with witnesses. If you don't, when you report him, he'll simply claim that he "misunderstood your signals" and didn't know his advances were unwelcome.
Have you kept a journal of incidents or related them to anyone on or off the job? Has anyone else witnessed this behavior or been subjected to it themselves?
Absolutely excellent advice. Please listen to what Heron said here as well as others who advise keeping a journal or sending yourself descriptions via email so you can document dates and times. Although difficult to prove, I believe you should fight this and stand up for yourself and your job. Everyone has a "boss", even if that boss is law enforcement. It may not end pretty. One never knows the relationship behind the scenes, meaning his boss may be a personal friend for all you know, so it can be tricky. This is up to you.
I understand how hard it can be to report this kind of thing, as well as the fear of losing your job. It's so crappy that people abuse their power in this manner. Anyways, from what you stated, you haven't blatantly said "no, stop flirting. It isn't going to happen" & while i'm sure he knows that's how you feel, he thinks he can keep pushing the envelope with the excuse "she never said to stop!".
I suppose this mite make it worse, by angering him. But could you communicate with him professionally & documented (perhaps a work email, with CCs to your supervisor and a few HR folks?) stating you do not want him to continue these types of activities. list specific quotes, grabbing, sexual innuendos, dates & witnesses, including patient's commenting to you about observing his inappropriateness. The fact that patients have noticed his actions should get HR to take it seriously, even if he does 'know' somebody in HR/management that allows his BS to continue. Wrap it up stating that if these actions continue you will be forced to file a formal complaint/report to HR. And something about 'at work, no distractions to provide the best patient care possible' or some BS like that. :-)
I know the type, so I could see this royally pissing him off. Sort of a way to let HR know this has been going on & while you're not filing an actual report they are now well aware. Just a thought, again as i could see an email going either way. I'm sorry he's singled you out & hoping that he'll be fired soon. Course, then he's just somewhere else & somebody else's problem.
Last thought, the part about him coming to your car as you were leaving. I know some places, depending on personal circumstances/distance to car during night-time, will insist on security walking you or even driving you to your car & seeing you safely off. Letting your facilities' security office know of the issue might be another way to document an on-going issue but with no formal complaint to HR. Unless he's all buddy-buddy with the officers...
And no, you certainly shouldn't have to play nice & not file a formal complaint, but in your shoes, when keeping your job is a concern... it was just an idea.
Either way, you DO need to tell him to stop advances firmly (preferable with witnesses!)...
Good luck...
OP, PLEASE LISTEN TO WHAT EVERYONE IS TELLING YOU. Multiple replies saying the same things. Most importantly, your safety comes first. Don't get me wrong, but...If this is just playfulness and flirting (I just threw up a little in my mouth), then firmly telling him to stop (definitely with witnesses if possible), may help. Unfortunately, it appears more serious. From those who know and have told you, it will not just go away, and LIKELY will escalate.
I know how it feels - he's in a position of authority for you and you don't want to rock the boat and risk losing your job. Or make him angry/escalate. I'm sorry, you must feel pretty scared.
I'd like to reinforce that you're not overreacting, and you've done nothing wrong. He sounds pretty off kilter. I do think you should go to HR - what he's doing isn't okay and the fact that most females in your department know this is pretty disturbing to me. He's abusing his authority.
Is there any way you can anonymously report him? As if you were a patient that has witnessed something? That might make you feel more comfortable, though perhaps it won't do much good.
If you don't want to go to HR, I'd at least recommend refusing to work on his weekends anymore.
I'm afraid for you. Please make sure you're safe. These kinds of people aren't just "joking" around. They are testing to see how far they can go.
Changing weekends is a good idea if not only to see if he then changes his to you's again. I mean, talk about evidence of stalking...
This pulled your story straight from very creepy to downright terrifying. He may have been scouting what car you drive so he could follow you outside the hospital. Maybe that sounds extreme, but there was a student a semester behind me in nursing school who did just that with his female classmates. That fear you felt when he followed you to your car? That desire to get away from him when he is touching you without permission? That is you accurately reading his intentions. That is a survival instinct. You need to listen to it.
We don't know where he will draw the line (does he just like to play with nurses who work under him or does he actually attack women?) but we know he doesn't care where yours is. If you choose to continue how you have been and remain passive, your job may not be in jeopardy, but your safety absolutely is.
If you speak up and tell him to STOP, he may not stop (I pretty much 100% guarantee he will tell you you're the one with the problem. He is wrong.) but you will have established that the interactions are unwanted. Do NOT get sassy with him; he will think it's part of the game. You do not need to say please. You do NOT need to explain exactly how he's being a creep. Say "You are making me uncomfortable. Do not touch me." "Do not talk to me that way; it's inappropriate." Then disengage. Do not let him bait you into talking in circles. Get to where other staff members are present.
I saw in another thread that you do not need your nursing income. You are in an extraordinarily good circumstance because finances are not of concern - your livelihood does not depend on tolerating this man's sexual harassment. Take advantage of that. Your concerns then, are making sure he doesn't get to leave a black mark on your nursing employment, and/or getting him out of the hospital so he can't do the same thing to the other women that he is and will be sexually harassing if he continues to get a free pass.
You said you don't want to overreact. There are a lot of nurses who have replied from this thread who have extensive knowledge through personal experience. Heed their wisdom. You are not overreacting.
To create a clearly documented history of not overreacting:
If you have not told him to stop, that is your next step. Since he has been getting away with it, it's possible he won't take you seriously enough to think about changing. If he tries to persuade you you're being too sensitive, stop the conversation and get away from him.
Then mention it to every superior (to you, if not to him) that you've already talked to, again. Take note of their response. You have already done this, so I honestly doubt it will get anyone's attention enough to put a target on your back. If anyone tells you to talk it out with him, tell them you will not have a discussion with him without a witness because you don't feel safe.
Document all of this. Document what he did and when, to the best of your recollection. Document who you told and when, to the best of your recollection. Document who witnessed these interactions. From now on, document on a shift by shift basis so that your memory doesn't get foggy about who, what, when, where, and how.
The people who have already done nothing will probably continue that pattern. That's when you take it a step up. When you go to HR or the company hotline or whoever is his supervisor you tell them what this guy has done, you say that you first tried to address it directly and were unsuccessful. You tell them that you tried to address it through your own management and were unsuccessful, so now you are looking for help to restore a safe working environment. Do this part via e-mail. No sane person would think you are being unreasonable.
Do have you had performance reviews? Are they reasonably good? Have you been warned or disciplined for anything? NOW is the time to establish that you are in good standing with them. If you report him, do it via e-mail and be VERY clear that you are in good standing and fear retaliation because he is in power.
If they do anything to you in the manner of warnings, write-ups, termination, that was not already an established problem before you reported him, that is retaliation. It's illegal, and whistleblowers have specific protections under the Department of Labor. You sue the pants off them and make them think twice before letting another predator run around stalking their female staff members from a position of power. But that may not happen. There may be people who care and will do the right thing. You don't know if you never report, and you'll probably never stop him if you don't report.
If you are dead set against reporting him, get out of that job. Now. At the very least, go PRN and only pick up shifts when he doesn't work. Or find another position - any position - ASAP so that when you leave that hospital, there's no gap on your employment history.
I don't know that this guy is necessarily going to follow intimate abuser patterns like trying to isolate you, but I think people have made some brilliant points about parallels in distorted thinking. You're not short of money, so get a lawyer. If you can't bear the thought of getting a lawyer, at least call a women's shelter. You'll find a lot more women who have survived experiences with men like that, who will tell you again that this is NOT the time to doubt your instincts.
If you document via e-mail, make sure you have a copy on a non-work e-mail account so that you don't lose the record if you sever employment with the hospital. The purpose is not just to document while knowledge is fresh, but to prove that you didn't just up and decide you don't like this guy one day and invent an entire history of harassment that didn't happen.
Report him. Take him to task for his behavior. If the hospital won't take him to task, you take the hospital to task. Stop him from hurting you however you need to, and worry about your job last. If you stand up for yourself, you also have a chance to protect other women from his harassment.
Sorry if this line of thought is a little disjointed; I'm just flabbergasted that this is being tolerated. I want you to be safe, and I also want someone to DO SOMETHING stop him.
Not at all disjointed and very inclussive as to what would be important in order to protect herself.
Report him now. Document everything in an email to yourself as suggested above.
On a side note, i can't believe your coworkers (especially the guys) let him get away with this. My female coworkers are my sisters and anyone who acts inappropriately with them will have a come to jesus meeting.
Can your kids take a bus? You don't have to work in a hospital. Any other job would be great compared to the one you have now since you don't have to worry about sexual harassment & a predator.
If that supervisor knows you are married but your husband is gone most of the time, that would scare me enough to say something - at the minimum!
He already knows what car you drive, it won't take much for him to follow you home & try to take advantage of you. If you don't do anything about this now, things can & will get worse.
Yes, yes, yes...! This Is such an important issue going on in your life. You need to tell your husband about this. How do you think he would feel if something were to happen to you and he didn't even know about this? It also wouldn't look good for your case if you choose to escalate this (and I am hoping you do), that you weren't even bothered enough by this behavior to tell your husband? I am not criticizing you..I get that you don't know what to do and reached out for advice. To be clear, Im just saying how it might look...that's all and also if my spouse were going through something like this, I most definitely would want to know about it.
I have read every post and thank you for taking your time to comment on this. I will start telling him no and that it makes me uncomfortable. I am a very passive person and I avoid conflict, so this is not easy for me. I'm sure many of you think "what's her problem?" but the idea of me telling a person to stop is very difficult. I am the type that prefers to keep the peace and put up with something rather than cause a scene and then people think badly about me. I am a people pleaser, and I know my personality is doing more harm than good in this situation.
I worked very hard to be able to go to nursing school and become a nurse. I did it without any support- my husband hates that I work and asks me to quit almost every day. I had to threaten divorce to just go to nursing school. Nursing has been a dream of mine for many years, and I needed to do this for me and to be able to not have to rely on someone else to financially support me. I want to be able to take care of myself and my kids on my own if I have to. My husband hates that and I constantly hear about how I am destroying my family and ruining the kids' lives by being so selfish. It is a major sore spot in our marriage, so I don't want to give my husband one more reason to tell me to quit or to be mad about all of this. I need to be able to handle this without him, and I don't see how he would be helpful in any way. He's never around, so it would simply be him talking to me on the phone about it, but I would still like to avoid it if possible.
I will start documenting everything and I think the emails to myself is a good idea. I will try telling him no and not talking to him at all unless it is about work. I will also start walking to my car with others. If I don't see any results, then I will have to go to HR. I thought about going to my nurse manager, but figured that wouldn't so much good since he oversees her too. Our supervisors oversee the whole hospital and cover it 24/7, while there are multiple managers for each department and are there only during normal day time hours (7 or 8am til 4 or 5pm). He is the only supervisor that is hands on and will even stick an IV on a patient if no one else can. All the others are more about paperwork and monitoring everyone. We only have one supervisor working at a time.
I am a new grad nurse and I've only been working here (my first nursing job) for almost a year. I didn't start working every other weekend until March, which is required, and he is the supervisor on the weekends. So those are the only times we work together. I do love my job. It's not like I can simply go get another hospital job that will work so well for my home situation. I have worked very hard to get here and I don't want to lose it.
I will start being firm, start saying no, walking with others to my car at night, and documenting everything. If none of that works, I will have to go to HR. I'm not sure they will do anything because I have been told this has happened before and clearly he still works here and the other nurses don't. So I don't think my chances of being successful are very good.
So sorry....I just replied to another reply to you regarding talking to your husband about this. Now that I read your follow up post, I get why you haven't told him. I'm sorry you are in this situation at all, and rspecially without family support.
I am a little concerned about people being able to identify me based on my comments. I think the odds of that happening are slim though. I doubt he is a member, but there's no way to know for sure.
Thank you for your concern. And to everyone that has expressed concern and support, I sincerely thank you. I constantly feel like I should have done things differently, and based on the comments I guess I should have. All I can do is change things now and handle his comments and actions differently. I hope that will be enough to make it all stop. I will go to HR with documentation if I can't get him to stop.
Please do not berate yourself for not knowing what to do sooner. This is an ugly thing most of us would just want to go away. Sadly, many here know what this is like and have advised you based on their own knowledge and experience. I am just happy you reached out. Just go forward from here as you have said you plan to do. Take it one step at a time, but please use some of the tactics others have given in order to make your case stronger and to protect yourself. Go back, read the advice and take notes. It will help.
OP, I think you misunderstand the role/hierarchy of the nursing supervisor.
The supe, house supe, house mom, whatever your hospital calls it, is typically NOT the superior or boss of your manager. They work for nursing administration, but are not "bosses' bosses" - they are there to oversee hospital flow during nights and weekends when the unit managers and administrators are not present, but they are not directly above unit managers. Typically, they are below (but not directly below) unit managers in the hierarchy. That's why they're "supervisors" and not "managers."
Agreed. I have done this kind of role. There is always an executive on call (members of the nursing and medical executive) as well as fhere are many things the house supervisor cannot do or authorise without permission. Also if ghere was a critical incident they have to be notified.
Find out who your exec on call is or the SMS (senior medical staff) who will be avery senior clinician for your next weekend. If you have to contact them they are the boss of bosses oot of hours. Also inform HR, security and a lawyer. Threaten to go to the media if they do not resolve this. This guy is an absolute creep. Find a new job as back up
Don't worry about retaliation from him, HR would on that before it even started. If I were you I would document all this, write down dates, times, specific incidences, build up a case, get a bunch of co-workers to report him also, you're probably not the only one. Make that initial report to HR really count, the more evidence the better. Leave a paper trail, send emails to HR and make sure they reply, no phone conversations. Throw around words like you "feel threatened" "considering a lawsuit" "sexual harassment", make that sucker pay, no one should tolerate this. Also I had a situation similar to this but nearly as extreme with a tech, I completely regret that I didn't say anything, if I could go back in time I would, of course hindsights 20/20, I'll think you'll regret more not saying anything then saying something.
BeenThere2012, ASN, RN
863 Posts
Absolutely excellent advice. Please listen to what Heron said here as well as others who advise keeping a journal or sending yourself descriptions via email so you can document dates and times. Although difficult to prove, I believe you should fight this and stand up for yourself and your job. Everyone has a "boss", even if that boss is law enforcement. It may not end pretty. One never knows the relationship behind the scenes, meaning his boss may be a personal friend for all you know, so it can be tricky. This is up to you.